The
pre-Islamic society in Arabia, the so-called Jahiliyya, was structured in a way
that the women were totally handicapped; the men dominated in every conceivable
way. The women were owned by men just like any other piece of property (many
would probably like to argue that they still are!). They could acquire them, use
them, and dump them in whatever way they wanted with impunity and without any
moral compunction or punity. The women could be bought as slaves who had no
rights whatsoever. The society was completely free and unrestrained in matters
of sexual exploitation of women. Physical beating of women for a reason or no
reason was a common practice; the women did not have any recourse for
alleviation or remediation of their social condition; they were completely at
the mercy of the men.

When Umar Ibn al-Khattab learned that his sister had embraced Islam, he went
over to her house and beat her mercilessly. When her husband tried to rescue
her, he beat him up too. And that incident curiously was also a turning point in
his life because he embraced Islam immediately afterwards, though surely not to
atone for his cruel behavior toward his sister. His attitude towards the women
was not much changed even after he had embraced Islam. At least one incident is
reported after his embracing Islam when he slapped his wife with overwhelming
force.

In this background, Prophet Muhammad sought to reform the evil society. The
measures that he prescribed for the Muslims were considered much too severe for
those times because the people were used to free license that the existing
society had bestowed on them. They were used to free sex and uncontrolled
drinking; Islam restricted them only to four wives and gradually prohibited
alcohol for them. Specific rules were prescribed for divorce, inheritance, and
compensation to the divorced wives. In the pre-Islamic society, the women were
physically part of the inheritance that the male descendents would acquire after
the death of his father. The oldest son would normally marry his step-mother
after the death of his father.

The reforms introduced by Islam were quite revolutionary for that time but
unfortunately the process of reformation froze at the stage where Prophet
Muhammad had left. Further evolution of these reforms was not allowed by the
descendents on the plea that nothing beyond the Quranic injunctions could be
used. Quran is the word of God and nobody has the authority to amend or change
it. Reinterpretation of the Quranic injunctions is grudgingly accepted but not
practically allowed. Sometimes, the Sharia, the code based on the Prophet’s
sunna, takes preference over even the Quran injunctions. This causes confusion
because the source of the Prophet’s sunna is Hadith whose authenticity is not
always trustworthy and beyond question.

However, all the women in Arabia were not hapless, disadvantaged, or without
material resources. There were women of wealth also in the society who owned
their own businesses and had their own free will and ways in day to day life.
But such women were few and far between. Khadija, Prophet Muhammad’s first wife,
who had employed Muhammad to manage her business, was one of them. The wives of
the aristocrats had social status which was due to their husbands’ endowment.
Generally, the women had a pitiable lot.

The veil entered the Muslim society in two distinct stages. It was a common
practice in Arabia even after the advent of Islam that the people would go to
visit other people uninvited whenever they wanted to do so. They would not care
to seek permission of the master of the household to enter his home. They would
sit, chat and while away the time without paying any heed whether they were
welcomed or not or whether they had already overstayed and should leave. Such
visits were not unusual even if they were not accepted all the time and became
harassing for the host.

When Prophet Muhammad married Zaynab Bint Jahsh, he invited nearly all the
Muslims to his house for the wedding supper. Muhammad’s servant, Anas ibn Malik,
narrated the proceedings as follows (1):

The Prophet had wed Zaynab Bint Jahsh. I was charged with inviting people to the
wedding supper. I carried out this charge. Many people came. They arrived in
groups one after the other. They ate and then they departed… At a certain
moment, the Prophet said: End the meal. Zaynab was seated in a corner of the
room. She was a woman of great beauty. All the guests departed except for three
who seemed oblivious of their surroundings. They were still there in the room
chatting away. Annoyed, the Prophet left the room. He went to A’isha’s
apartment…. He thus made the round of the apartments of his wives…Finally; he
retraced his steps and came again to Zaynab’s room. He saw that the three guests
had still not departed…The Prophet was an extremely polite and reserved man. He
quickly left again and returned to A’isha’s apartment. I (Anas ibn Malik) don’t
remember any more whether it was I or someone else who went to tell him that the
three individuals had finally decided to leave. In any case, he came back to the
nuptial chamber. He put one foot in the room and kept the other outside. It was
in this position that he let fall a sitr (curtain) between himself and me and
the verse of the hijab descended at that moment.

The above referred verses are included in Chapter 33, Al-Ahzab, of the Holy
Quran. According to verse 53:

O Ye who believe! Enter not the Prophet’s house until leave is given you - for a
meal (and then) not (so early as) to wait for its preparation; but when ye are
invited, enter, and when ye have taken your meal, disperse, without seeking
familiar talk. Such (behavior) annoys the Prophet, he is ashamed to dismiss you
but Allah is not ashamed (to tell you) the truth. And when ye ask (his ladies)
for anything ye want, ask them from before a screen; that makes for greater
purity for your hearts and for theirs. Nor is it right that ye should annoy
Allah’s Messenger, or that ye should marry the widows after him at any time.
Truly such a thing is in Allah’s sight an enormity. (A. Yusuf Ali’s translation)

The curtain or screen separating the visitors and the Prophet’s wives became a
general prescription and practice for all the Muslim wives. The last line of the
above verse seems somewhat out of place but it is not, if it is reviewed under
the circumstances at that time. The Arabs in those days were quite loud and
outspoken in their day to day affairs. Some of the injudicious ones had let it
be known in public that they would marry the Prophet’s widows in due time. This
line of the verse clarified the social situation of the Prophet’s wives in
relation to the other Muslims. Afterwards, the Prophet’s wives were addressed as
the “mothers of the believers” (um’haat-el-momineen) to dispel any lingering
doubt.

The second stage of the veil, popularly known as hijab these days, was
occasioned by the wayward behavior of many men in Medina. According to Fatima
Mernissi (2), “Women, whatever their status, were being harassed in the streets,
pursued by men who subjected them to the humiliating practice of ta’arrud –
literally taking up a position along a woman’s path to urge her to fornicate, to
commit the act of zina. At this point, the Prophet’s problem was no longer
freeing women from the chains of pre-Islamic violence (because he did not have
unchallenged authority, author), but simply assuring the safety of his own wives
and those of other Muslims in a city (Medina) that was hostile and out of
control.”

The Prophet enquired through emissaries from such hoodlums why they molested the
women like that. They said, “We only practice ta’arrud with women we believe to
be slaves, thus excusing themselves by claiming confusion about the identity of
the women they approached,” (2).

In this situation, Allah revealed verse 59 of Sura 33, Al-Ahzab, to eliminate
any confusion regarding the identity of the Muslim women. The verse reads as
follows: “O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that
they should cast their outer garments (jilbab) over their persons (when abroad –
outside their homes, author); that is most convenient, that they should be known
(as such) and not molested. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving – Most Merciful.” The
attire that was used by the Muslim women to veil themselves was called jilbab.
The hijab that is used by the Muslim women these days, although different from
jilbab, has the same function as stated above. The social norm for the Muslim
women for the purpose of modestly dressing themselves and their social posture,
while going out in public was further elaborated in Sura 24, Light, verse 31 as
follows:

And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their
modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what
(must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their
bosom, and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers,
their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or
their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves whom
their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small
children who have no sense of shame of sex; and they should not strike their
feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O Ye Believers!
Turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.

After the conquest of Mecca, the Muslims were practically the unchallenged
rulers of Arabia and the social conditions in Medina were also not menacing for
the women. But, since hijab had been formally ordained by the Quran, there was
no going back and it stayed irrevocably in the Muslim world. Commenting on this
point, Mernissi (3) wrote, “For women, security would never return to the city.
No more than dreams, can a journey back in time change the fact that the Medina
of women would be forever frozen in its violent posture. From then on, women
would have to walk the streets of uncaring, unsafe cities, ever watchful,
wrapped in their jilbab. The veil, which was intended to protect them from
violence in the street, would accompany them for centuries, whatever the
security situation of the city.”

Hijab in the Western World

Over the past several centuries, the hijab has become an item of daily attire of
the Muslim women in Arab countries. It is not so much of a factual tool of
female exploitation because many women wear it routinely and voluntarily. If it
were oppressive and degrading of their feminity in any way, the Muslim women, at
least in the western countries, would discard it and that would be the end of
it. The Muslim men have accorded a secondary and subservient position to their
women-folks in several other important ways, which of course is irrelevant in
the perspective of the western world where the immigrants have chosen to live
and raise their families.

There are two icons of real power in the Muslim culture and power structure, at
least conceptually, namely the caliph who has the supreme political power and
the Imam who is the religious head. According to Fatima Mernissi (4), “There is
no feminine form of the words imam or caliph, the two words that embody the
concept of power in the Arabic language in which the Koran was revealed. The
Lisan ‘al-Arab dictionary informs us without qualification that ‘al-khalifatu la
yakunu illa al-dhikar’ (caliph is used only in the masculine).” Thus the issue
of a woman becoming Head of a Muslim state is moot. This came in the open and
became a topic of heated discussion when Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister of
Pakistan after the tragic death of President Zia-ul-Haq. There are very few
Muslim women leaders and intellectuals who would fight for the rights of women
and equality of sexes in the Muslim world. Likewise, there are only a few
writers, like Fatima Mernissi, who would enlighten the Muslim women that they
need to fight for their rights.

Hijab in the western world is just a symbol of the Arab/Islamic culture, which
the wearer wants to preserve. It is like the identity badge which the women in
Medina had started wearing to identify them to avoid harassment at the hands of
the hoodlums. Unfortunately, it has been politicized in several western
countries which seem to be paranoid of the Muslim culture. In the face of this
opposition, many non-Arab Muslim women have also started wearing it to assert
their Muslim identity. A multicultural society is a diverse society which of
course doesn’t necessarily mean that it doesn’t require to be regulated. Such
regulation should however be moderate and tolerant and avoid hurting the
individual cultural susceptibilities whenever possible. The debate on hijab and
jilbab will presumably continue in the western world until the ghosts of
xenophobia are laid to rest for ever.